Nicolas Winding Refn Discusses ‘Barbarella’ TV Series Nicolas Winding Refn Discusses ‘Barbarella’ TV Series Share Comment Director Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive was a runaway critical success – and one of our favorite films of 2011 – but so far, it’s proving a tough act to follow, at least for the crowds at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. His follow-up, the Thai boxing crime thriller Only God Forgives , premiered to a scattering of boos in the audience. Early reviews suggest that the film is off-puttingly violent, but any film which is called “bloated, corpulent and borderline repulsive” yet also “magnificent” in the same review clearly needs to be judged individually. Given Refn’s attitude toward the films he makes – they are often idiosyncratic, occasionally slow and punctuated with scenes of brutal violence – we look forward to one particular project he has in the works: a TV series reboot of the 1968 film Barbarella starring Jane Fonda.

Based on a series of French comics by Jean-Claude Forest, Barbarella was directed by Roger Vadim (Fonda’s then-husband) and followed the sexy adventures of the title character, a bounty hunter tasked by the President of Earth (now a peaceful, violence-free planet) with tracking down Doctor Durand Durand, who has built a deadly Positronic Ray. When asked about the project’s status – courtesy of Vulture – Refn said: “We are just writing it still. I kind of went back to the original comic, and really began to close my eyes and fantasize about women in outer space and it looked pretty good.” As for who he might cast in the title role: “No, I haven’t started casting yet.” Jane Fonda’s original performance cemented her status as a sex symbol for that generation – the original film’s opening credit sequence featuring a slow motion, zero gravity striptease might have had something to do with that. The first reports that Nicolas Refn was involved in this project surfaced about a year ago , around the same time we learned he would be interested in making a Wonder Woman film starring Christina Hendricks .

Since then, we learned that he has left the big screen remake of The Equalizer starring Denzel Washington, which is moving forward with Training Day director Antoine Fuqua at the helm. Refn’s comment on fantasizing about women in outer space is… interesting, and perhaps a bit troubling, given that later in the same interview he discusses wanting to make an all-female horror film (he has a two-picture deal which includes Only God Forgives, so it might actually happen). Why only women? “Because women and horror is so sexy.” An all-women horror film has worked before – in The Descent , for instance, although that film was pretty far from sexy. That said, the notion of an extreme stylist like Refn bringing his unique spin to something like Barbarella is very exciting. Considered the first mainstream “adult comic,” the character became a symbol of the coming sexual revolution, and the film remains a cult classic to this day. The future of the project may depend to some degree on the success of Only God Forgives once it gets a wide release. Either way, stay tuned for more as details surface. Anne Hathaway to star in Barbarella remake? | Metro News Anne Hathaway to star in Barbarella remake?

metrowebukmetro Friday 10 Dec 2010 1:12 pm Anne Hathaway is rumoured to be up for a role in a reboot of Barbarella. Could Anne Hathaway be the new Barbarella (Getty) The Devil Wears Prada star has been linked to the movie by film website Pajiba. “A. Hathaway latest ‘attached’ to Barbarella. Project currently is without a director,’ the site tweeted. Machete director Robert Rodriguez tried to kick start the remake back in 2007 with his then girlfriend Rose McGowan in the lead but Universal Studios backed out of the deal blaming ‘financial issues’. Since then then nothing more has been heard about the project. Barbarella is a 1968 cult sci-fi film starring Jane Fonda which was based on the French Barbarella comics created by Jean-Claude Forest. Hathaway has been lined up to host next year’s Oscars alongside James Franco. The actress told Entertainment Tonight that she is nervous about becoming one of the few women to ever host the ceremony, saying: ‘I found out that I’m one of three women to host since… I think it was 1987.

Maybe I’m the fourth, I’m not sure.’ ‘I’m still learning all the amazing statistics that I almost don’t want to know because it gets a little bit too intimidating.’ More A 'Barbarella' TV Series Is Coming To Amazon Instant | The Huffington Post A 'Barbarella' TV Series Is Coming To Amazon Instant 01/21/2014 10:49 am ET | Updated Jan 25, 2014 Adding to its growing list of original series , Amazon Studios will develop the pilot for "Barbarella," which was written by "Skyfall" screenwriters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade. "Barbarella," based on the French comics by Jean-Claude Forest, was brought to cult fame by the 1968 sci-fi film starring Jane Fonda. Set in the future, the film follows the titular sexpot crime-fighter tasked with stopping an evil weapons inventor known as Durand-Durand. If that description doesn't sound awesome enough for a TV reboot, let us remind you that it will be helmed by "Drive" director Refn. We can see the gory laser-gun-inflicted wounds and synth-soundtracked space fight scenes already.

Now we're just left to wonder if Ryan Gosling will make a cameo in a flashy space suit. Related on HuffPost: Jean-Claude Forest’s Barbarella | PAUL GRAVETT A Landmark in Adult French Comics âBarbarella, look after your little boots, And just tell me once and for all, That you love me, or else, I’ll send you back to your science fiction.â It’s a sign of how âinâ and cool Barbarella was in swinging 1966 in France, that superstar singer-songwriter Serge Gainsbourg devoted this whole verse to her in his hit song, Qui Est In, Qui Est Out (‘Who’s In, Who’s Out’), while only mentioning The Beatles briefly as âThe lads from Liverpool.â Two years later, the English-language Roger Vadim movie adaptation, starring a 30-year-old Jane Fonda, turned the blonde space adventuress into a highly visible global symbol of the sexual revolution (below are the British poster by Robin Ray (later known as erotic comics maestro Eric Von Gotha) and the Czech poster by Kaya Saudek).

Barbarella was a truly liberating creation, not only for her creator, Jean-Claude Forest (1930-1998) but also for French and international comics as a whole. Today, France is justly famed for its abundant and sophisticated bande dessinÃ©e, or comics, culture, much of it aimed at older readers. Recognised as âthe Ninth Art,â it is honoured with major gallery exhibitions and in AngoulÃªme a massive yearly festival and state-of-the-art museum, and its writers and artists are hailed as auteurs, geniuses, and celebrities. The quality, and sheer quantity, of graphic novels have been rising year-on-year for over 12 years, stabilizing with only a small dip to over 5,000 new titles published in 2013. But it was not always like this. Itâs easy to forget that France was once hostile to comics, especially those imported and translated from America, and was one of the first countries to impose strict controls on what could be published.

Forest’s eight initial Barbarella adventures, compiled into an âadults-onlyâ album in 1964, would have been subjected to these same stifling state controls and presented an important challenge to their power and relevance. To put Barbarellaâs heyday into some context we need to time-travel back to the aftermath of the Second World War. Moral panics soon broke out in many countries, prompted by fears about the future, embodied in children and childhood in general, and about rising juvenile delinquency, hardly surprising considering the societal and familial damage caused by the conflict. Rather than deal directly with the more complex roots of this problem, politicians and various interest groups sought causes and scapegoats elsewhere in the mass media, and in particular in the least defensible medium presumed to be solely for children - comics. In America, anxious to avoid legislation, the majority of publishers banded together in 1954 to finance their own regulator, the Comics Code Authority, which enforced rigorous, infantilizing limits on content. In Britain, cut-price publishers of reprints of American comic books were too small-scale and disparate to defend or self-regulate their products.

Instead, pressures to take action built up on the government, which finally enacted a ban in 1955 through the Children and Young Persons (Harmful Publications) Act. France was much quicker off the mark with both a state-run regulatory commission and legislation. As early as May 20, 1947, the Communist Party proposed a legal curb on the excesses of popular American and American-style comics. Juvenile crime rates reinforced their arguments, showing that 31,000 minors had been convicted in 1946, three times the number in 1936.

No enquiry arose from the proposal, but in March 1948 the government began consultations of its own to draft a law to âOrganize the control of publications intended for young people.â After much debate and several redrafts, the wording for a law was passed on July 16, 1949 to prohibit any publication âPresenting in a favorable light crime, theft, laziness, cowardice, hatred, debauchery or any acts qualified as crimes or misdemeanors or of a type to demoralize children or young people.â The day before, leading comics artist Alain Saint-Ogan had written as president of the Union of Children’s Magazine Illustrators to warn the legislators that abandoning a minimum proportion of foreign material would be a catastrophe for French illustrators.

A proposed quota insisting on a minimum of 75% French material within the total output of publications covered by the law was dropped in place of a truncated clause, which made it a crime to provide minors under 18 years old publications “Presenting a danger to youth because of their licentious or pornographic character.” Breaking into the industry during his early twenties, Jean-Claude Forest was already well aware of the restrictions working for France’s post-War comics market, cartooning in his very lively, loose style on necessarily innocuous scripts for comedies in the Communist weekly Vaillant, later re-named Pif Gadget, or a series of Charlot albums inspired by Charlie Chaplin. In one 1960 episode (above), for example, Charlot Interplanetary Pioneer scripted by Roland De Montaubert, the little tramp falls for and proposes to a Brigitte Bardot-style woman on an alien planet. She agrees to have his future children but before they can marry, war breaks out with another planet and Charlot finds himself conscripted. Forest’s abiding love of science fiction would re-surface in further Charlot tales, from an encounter with robots to a voyage to the moon.

Forest found greater freedoms elsewhere in the science fiction magazine Fiction, launched in 1953 as the French edition of the American Magazine of Fiction and Science Fiction. Although there was no official quota requiring French content, the publishers chose not to use the original American covers and commissioned Forest to produce new French covers, in which beautiful women frequently featured. Forest also contributed interior artwork, including a profusely illustrated reprint in Fiction‘s Summer 1955 issue of Catherine L. Moore’s 1933 Weird Tales story ‘Shambleau’, about a seductive woman-like creature who, in a twist on the legend of the Medusa, hypnotizes and devours her victims by addicting them to sexual ecstasy (opening page, below). A few years later, Forest would revisit and reinvent the Medusa myth for his second episode of Barbarella. As a collector and fan, Forest was knowledgeable and enthusiastic about American science fiction of his era and before, and not just through the French Fiction magazine.

In 1958, he began illustrating nearly half of all the color covers for Hachette’s science fiction imprint Le Rayon Fantastique (below), veering between surreal abstraction and more traditional imagery, again often incorporating attractive female forms, in the earlier tradition of America’s great pulp magazines and continued in the comic books. Forest’s notion in Barbarella of combining science fiction, comics, and a strong female lead had precedents in American newspaper strips and comic books. In Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon, Dale Arden may have been forever ardent about Flash, but she usually played only the glamorous love interest, pining to be rescued. In Frank Hampson’s Dan Dare series in Eagle, Professor Peabody turned out to be a brilliant woman scientist, though she remained prim and proper, and entirely desexualized, because she was appearing in a British children’s weekly edited by the Reverend Marcus Morris. One attractive and active female protagonist who might well have caught Forest’s eye was Connie, an American strip created from 1927 to 1944 by Frank Godwin. His resourceful, curly-haired Connie Kurridge appeared under various names in France and in various genres including escapades in outer space.

In 1940, the New York publisher Fiction House diversified from pulp magazines into comic books, and in 1940 spun-off their science fiction title Planet Stories into Planet Comics. Women still tended to be portrayed here as cheesecake in peril with tight-fitting, revealing outfits, but a notable exception was Mysta of the Moon, âThe most intelligent being in the universe.â Mysta was introduced in 1945 during the closing months of World War II, as “A slender girl, alone against the universe’s most evil forceâ¦ the God of War! She, a living temple of man’s essential goodness, is his last hope!” Over the course of 28 stories credited to âRoss Gallun,â an in-house pen-name, Mysta relocated from her lunar citadel to Earth where, disguised as lowly lab âtechnician grade three,â Ana Thane, she battled monsters and villains, helped by her cloak of invisibility and her telepathically-controlled robot. The splash page (above) is from an episode in Planet Comics #37 drawn by Fran Hopper.

Whatever their influence, these precursors were very different from the science fiction heroine which Jean-Claude Forest devised in 1962 for Georges H. Gallet, editor of Le Rayon Fantastique list and of the men’s interest quarterly V-Magazine (a Forest interior image from Autumn 1960, and a George Pichard cover from Autumn 1962, above). Forest later recalled Barbarella’s origins. “One day [Gallet] asked me if I wanted to do a strip for him - no holds barred! Gallet had asked me to do a kind of female Tarzan, Tarzella, but that idea didn’t particularly interest me. It led me to come up with Barbarella. For the next two years, at the rate of eight pages every three months, I told her adventures, going with the flow of inspiration, without any pre-planning.” As she sprang into life on the pages of V-Magazine in the Spring 1962 issue, you can feel the freedom from censorship and self-censorship which Forest enjoyed, developing his âbeautiful orchidâ into a woman of intelligence and principle, sensitivity and sensuality.

She is described by the one-eyed Queen of Sogo as âVenus personifiedâ with “a face as pure as a vestal virgin’s, but she is more desirable than all the whores of Sogo.â Like an intergalactic Gulliver’s Travels, Forest’s playfully imaginative serial reveals how the crash-landed space traveller interacts with the bizarre inhabitants of the planet Lythion. At this time, the culture of comics appreciation was gradually changing in France and Forest was involved, along with film director Alain Resnais, with the first organization of comic fans, Le Club des Bandes DessinÃ©es in 1962. Forest was on the editorial team of the Club’s magazine, Giff Wiff (below). Another enthusiast Club member was the Belgian-born French publisher Eric Losfeld, whose company Le Terrain Vague (the French translation of his surname meaning âwastelandâ) specialized in erotic and fantasy literature. Losfeld got Forest’s agreement in 1964 to compile the V-Magazine stories into a deluxe, over-sized hardback artbook for adults only, a first of its kind for comics in France.

In 1969, Losfeld recalled, âOf the 600 books Iâve published in 20 years, six got me into trouble with the Surveillance Commission, and the first of these was Barbarella.â Under the 1949 law, the book was banned from being put on public display. Nevertheless it received rave reviews and from a modest initial print-run, it would go on to sell 200,000 copies. Barbarella proved there was an adult readership for adult comics in high-quality albums, or âgraphic novels,â a term coined in that same year, 1964, by American critic and dealer Richard Kyle. The French ban on Barbarella was never lifted and for subsequent re-editions Forest would revise his artwork, making it more, or less, tame to suit the times. In the version published to tie in with the 1968 film, with Jane Fonda’s photograph on the cover, Barbarella was more covered up, while a later editions would reveal even more than the original (below).

Her erotic appeal was often remarked on by the media, but to Forest this was only one aspect of its success. Bemused by this, he remarked in (Ã suivre) magazine in 1984, âWhere I saw humor and the expression of liberty, all they saw was âla fesseâ (literally, âthe buttâ).â Barbarella was the vanguard of a Sixties wave of liberated comics heroines in France and elsewhere. V-Magazine itself followed up in 1965 with Scarlett Dream by Claude Moliterni and Robert Gigi, and Blanche Epiphanie by Jacques Lob and Georges Pichard (below), while Losfeld also published hardcovers of the Pop Art adventures of Guy Peellaert’s Jodelle and Pravda. By happy coincidence, the October 1962 issue of Playboy had introduced Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder’s Little Annie Fanny, though she was typically more a reactive than active protagonist, an innocent broad abroad and closer to the dumb blonde stereotype.

Barbarella arrived in America in the hip intellectual magazine Evergreen Review in 1964, and in the following issue, August-September 1964, Michael O’Donoghue and Frank Springer debuted their erotic fantasy female, Phoebe Zeit-Geist, taking inspiration from Terry Southern’s 1957 novel Candy (Southern is shown in this Dennis Hopper photo below, on the beach on a Sunday in Malibu in 1965, while hanging out with Robert Fraser at Fonda and Vadim’s house). Southern was a natural choice to go on to write the Barbarella screenplay. Among Barbarella’s other âsistersâ are ValÃ©rian’s feisty companion, Laureline in France, Vampirella and Sally Forth in America, and Modesty Blaise, Varoomshka, Oh! Wicked Wanda, and Scarth A.D. 2195 in Britain, Satanik, Jacula, Isabella, and Valentina in Italy, and the fictional Russian Amazon Octobriana (she was actually adapted from a Czech project).

It is hard to ignore the fact that all of these characters were created by men, although Trina Robbins designed Vampirella’s revealing costume and writer Jo Addams scripted the Scarth newspaper strip. So it’s significant that the Humanoids’ new editions of Barbarella (in a Collectors’ Edition this year, and next year a smaller-format collection of the first and second French albums) welcomes a woman’s creativity to the work in Kelly Sue DeConnick’s engaging adaptation. DeConnickâs contemporary spin on Forestâs script remains appropriately flirty and camp whilst providing a fresh perspective, ensuring that Barbarella remains as important a symbol of feminism as she was over fifty years ago. Strong, independent, sexually liberated, yet with a touching fragility, Barbarella is more than just a pin-up, sheâs a fully rounded human being. Jean-Claude Forest (above) went on to create many other characters and masterpieces, but Barbarella transformed his work and his life. Right to the end, he was busy as a consultant on a proposed animated version from Nelvana, and as a collaborator with Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier on a new American Barbarella comic book.

Today, after plans for a re-make of the movie by Robert Rodriguez fell through, a television series is in full development with acclaimed filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn (Drive) attached as a producer. It’s never too late to discover, or re-discover, Forest’s iconic creation â a bright, beautiful star, forever fresh and free-spirited. Posted: September 25, 2014 An edited version of this Article originally appeared as the Foreword to the 2014 Humanoids Inc. edition of Barbarella. Advertisements 'Skyfall' Writers Neal Purvis and Robert Wade Partner on 'Barbarella'-Inspired TV Show | Hollywood Reporter 'Skyfall' Writers Neal Purvis and Robert Wade Partner on 'Barbarella'-Inspired TV Show 9:26 AM PST 1/29/2013 by Stuart Kemp COMMENTS The series based on the 1969s sci-fi icon will be directed by Nicolas Refn. LONDON – Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, who co-wrote the James Bond blockbuster Skyfall, are teaming up to pen a TV show based on the 1960s sci-fi icon Barbarella.

Gaumont International Television, the L.A.-based production and distribution banner partners with French giant Canal Plus, to produce the show. Barbarella will be based on the character created by Jean-Claude Forest and made famous in the 1968 film of the same name starring Jane Fonda. Nicolas Refn directs and will executive produce the series alongside Martha De Laurentiis. Co-executive producers are Julien Forest and Jean-Marc Lofficier. The hire of Purvis and Wade was announced Tuesday by Gaumont International Television CEO Katie O’Connell and Christophe Riandee, Gaumont vice-CEO. Purvis and Wade most recently partnered on Skyfall, the global box office smash directed by Sam Mendes and starring Daniel Craig as 007. "I'm extremely excited that Neal and Robert have signed on to develop and write Barbarella with me,” said series director and executive producer Nicolas Refn. “I'm certain that the combination of our creative forces will produce a show that is as enthralling as it is sexy." Wade described the character as "always beguiling and transgressive and we are excited to reimagine her journey in the company of Mr.

Refn." Purvis and Wade are repped by UTA and Casarotto Ramsey & Associates. Refn is repped by WME and Martha De Laurentiis by CAA. Barbarella (film) | Duran Duran Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia Edit Set in the 40th century, Barbarella follows the adventures of its title character played by Jane Fonda. In the film, Barbarella is assigned by the President of Earth to retrieve Doctor Durand Durand from the planet So Go in order to save the earth. Beyond this premise, the plot is very loose, serving mostly as an excuse for Barbarella to end up in erotic situations. On her quest to find Durand Durand, Barbarella is seduced by a human resident of SoGo, who introduces her to penetrative intercourse (civilized people of Barbarella's society find sexual release through pharmaceuticals), seduces an angel named Pygar, and overloads a torture device (called the Excessive Machine) which kills through sexual pleasure. Style Edit Barbarella is famous for a sequence in which the title character, played by Jane Fonda, undresses in zero gravity during the opening credits.

The whole film is played in a tongue-in-cheek manner;especially when it comes to the frequent (but not explicit) sex scenes. The most controversial of those scenes involves Barbarella being tortured by the use of a piano-like instrument that delivers sexual pleasure in doses that can be lethal, although Barbarella survives the ordeal and is visibly disappointed when it is discovered she has overloaded the machine. The film was simultaneously shot in French and English. Some characters' lines were performed by the same actors in both languages; others were not: In the French version, Fonda performs her own lines in French. Marcel Marceau's lines are dubbed into English. De Laurentiis returned to camp science fiction (but with far less erotica) with 1980s Flash Gordon. Cast Ugo Tognazzi as Mark Hand Reception and influences Edit The film was both a box office and critical failure on its release. Variety 's review stated that "Despite a certain amount of production dash and polish and a few silly-funny lines of dialogue, Barbarella isn't very much of a film.

Based on what has been called an adult comic strip, the Dino De Laurentiis production is flawed with a cast that is not particularly adept at comedy, a flat script, and direction which can't get this beached whale afloat." Another major critic at the time claimed the film was a "mix of poor special effects and the Marquis de Sade ."However, it has gained a cult following since its re-release in 1977 on home video, and has had considerable influence on pop and film culture in the decades following its original release. Jane Fonda has subsequently lamented the fact that she turned down starring roles in two major hit films, Bonnie and Clyde and Rosemary's Baby to stay in France and star in Barbarella, which was being directed by her then husband Roger Vadim. Sound track Edit The film's score was also popular and obtained a cult following. The music was composed by Bob Crewe and Charles Fox . During his first European tour in 1967 Frank Zappa flew from Copenhagen to Italy to meet Vadim and Fonda in order to discuss the possibility of him composing the music for the film.

It never happened, but Frank Zappa remained faithful to his love for sci-fi, and composed several tributes to the genre. Music Edit In the world of comics , the manga artists collectively known as CLAMP parodied Barbarella in one chapter of their Miyuki-chan in Wonderland , the chapter titled TV no Kuni no Miyuki-chan (Miyuki-chan in TV Land) shows several of the characters (including some female versions) trying to seduce the main character. The manga contains heavy lesbian overtones. In 2008 the indie pop singer Lights made a Barbarella-themed music video for her song "Drive My Soul". From 1988 to 2002, a nightclub in downtown Orlando , Florida was called Barbarella, inspired by the film. Although the club is still open, it has changed its name to Independent Bar . In episode 1 of the anime F3: Frantic, Frustrated & Female , Hiroe finds herself strapped to a chair by a mad scientist in order to test out a sex machine, parodying Barbarella's situation with Durand Durand. Duran Duran Edit The band Duran Duran takes its name from the mad scientist Dr. Durand Durand.

O'Shea repaid the compliment by appearing (as an older version of Durand Durand) in Arena (An Absurd Notion) , the band's 1985 concert film. (Though the Arena DVD subtitles spell the villain's name as "Duran Duran".) Some of the band's early appearances were at a nightclub called Barbarella's , in their home town of Birmingham , England. The band has continually used sound clips from the film in their songs, most notably 1989's " Burning The Ground " and the remixes for 1990's " Violence of Summer (Love's Taking Over) ". The band continued the homage to its roots with their 1997 US single, " Electric Barbarella " (released in the UK in 1998). Stephen Duffy , an original member of Duran Duran , released a solo song titled " Barbarellas " on his 1998 I Love My Friends album. 1980's Edit When the 1980s girl group Fuzzbox could not get permission to use the Thunderbirds of the British TV series for their song International Rescue.

They spoofed Barbarella with Adrian Edmondson playing the Durand Durand character. They also featured their faithful cover version of the theme song on the single's B-side. The American pop band The Bongos recorded a song called "Barbarella" on their RCA EP "Numbers With Wings". It became a college radio favorite and dancefloor hit in 1983. Popular culture Edit Another famous singer to use the iconography of Barbarella in a pop video was Kylie Minogue who recreated the infamous zero-gravity strip-tease in her award winning 1994 video for " Put Yourself in My Place ". It was again recreated in the European video for Jem 's 2005 single " They ". In 1998, front man Scott Weiland of the bands Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver released a solo album entitled 12 Bar Blues . The hit song from that album which spawned a music video was titled " Barbarella ". The lyrics of the song pay homage to several science fiction television shows and movies. The band Matmos takes its name from the underground fluid creature in the film.

The Finnish rock band The 69 Eyes also recorded a song called "Barbarella" released in Bump 'n' Grind album in 1992. The song's intro starts with Barbarella speaking; that was taken from the original movie. The psychedelic "blob" patterns that form much of the special effects in the film are created using an oil wheel projector , a popular visual effects device also used in many other '60s movies, as well as in many anti- drug educational films. Remake Edit A remake of Barbarella is planned. It will be penned by current James Bond writers Neal Purvis and Robert Wade , and produced by Dino and Martha De Laurentiis. It was recently announced that Sin City director Robert Rodriguez is slated to direct the remake for Universal Studios . The remake of Barbarella was originally planned in the 1990s with Roger Vadim as director, and actresses Sherilyn Fenn and Drew Barrymore were considered for the title role. As of May 2007, it was announced that actress Erica Durance of the WB's Smallville was a front-runner for a 2008 remake.

However, subsequent reports have identified British actress Sienna Miller as the favorite to take the role, along with Rodriguez's Grindhouse star Rose McGowan . According to Elle magazine, McGowan has been cast in the title role. According to the New York Observer , Universal Studios has backed out of funding the movie because of Rodriguez's insistence to cast McGowan in the title role. Executives reportedly do not think that she can carry a movie with a budget close to $100 million. Once Universal learned of Rodriguez's decision to cast McGowan they slashed the budget significantly. Rodriguez denies this, saying, "Universal had initially signed on for $60 million, but then when we were done with the script it wound up at closer to $82 million." The filmmaker is currently shopping the project around to other studios in the hopes of getting more money. He has cited the fact that most of the movie takes place in outer space as the reason for the rise in budget, and that "we don’t want the movie to look like the original." Rodriguez backed out of the project, and in June 2009, Entertainment Weekly reported that Robert Luketic will be directing the remake with a different studio.

Forest Bibliography TO PRODUCE NEW SERIES BASED ON ICONIC CHARACTER 'BARBARELLA' Award-winning Nicolas Refn to direct and executive produce LOS ANGELES, CA - JUNE 21, 2012 - Gaumont International Television, the production and distribution studio based in Los Angeles and part of the legendary European-based motion picture studio Gaumont, announced today that the company is teaming with Drive helmer Nicolas Refn to bring the iconic character 'Barbarella' to the small screen. The series will be based on the character created by Jean-Claude Forest and made famous in the 1968 film of the same name staring Jane Fonda. Nicolas Refn will direct and executive produce the series alongside Martha DeLaurentiis whose production entity The DeLaurentiis Company produced the original movie. Co-Executive Producers are Julien Forest & Jean-Marc Lofficier. The announcement was made today by Katie O'Connell, CEO for Gaumont International Television. "I'm excited for the opportunity to reinvent 'Barbarella' with my friends at Gaumont and Martha De Laurentiis," said Refn.

"And I look forward to bringing this unique character to life for a new generation of fans as I believe she is one of the ultimate counter-cultural characters." "I love Nicolas Refn," said Martha De Laurentiis, "and feel he has the perfect vision to elevate such an iconic character like 'Barbarella' and bring her to new audiences worldwide." Added De Laurentiis who is also working with Gaumont on the NBC series Hannibal, "I feel lightning strikes twice with a partnership with Gaumont on two huge franchise projects." "Barbarella was originally a French graphic novel by Jean-Claude Forest which spawned the cult favorite movie of the same name," commented O'Connell. "We are thrilled to have secured the rights from the Forest estate and are thrilled to be pairing the bold visceral style of Nicolas Refn with the pop culture icon Barbarella." Gaumont International Television is currently producing the Bryan Fuller series Hannibal starring Hugh Dancy and Mads Mikkelsen for NBC, as well as the Eli Roth series Hemlock Grove starring Famke Janssen and Bill Skarsgard for Netflix.

Nicolas Refn is repped by WME, Anonymous Content and Independent Talent Group and Martha DeLaurentiis is repped by CAA and the Jean-Claude Forest Estate is repped by Hollywood Comics. About Nicolas Refn Born in Copenhagen, Denmark, Nicolas Winding Refn is an award-winning writer, director and producer. At only 24, Nicolas had written and directed the extremely violent and uncompromising, Pusher. The film became a cult phenomenon and won him instant international critical acclaim in 1996. After Pusher, Nicolas wrote, produced, and directed his next film, Bleeder, followed by Fear X (2003) was his first foray into English language films. Following Fear X, Refn returned to his native Denmark to write, direct and produce Pusher II (2004) and Pusher III (2005), as a result of his first movie's growing cult following. In 2006, Refn wrote and directed Bronson, an ultra-violent, surreal, escapist film following the real life landmarks and self-entrapment of Britain's most notorious criminal, Michael Peterson.

Refn next wrote, directed and produced Valhalla Rising, starring his long time collaborator, Mads Mikkelsen. Nicolas' most recent film, Drive, has been his most successful to date. For his work in Drive, Refn has received numerous accolades and more than a dozen nominations and awards from festivals worldwide. The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, where it was nominated for the prestigious Palme d'Or award and won in the category for Best Director. Currently, Refn is in post-production for a film he wrote, produced, and directed called, Only God Forgives, staring Ryan Gosling and Kristen Scott Thomas and produced by Gaumont. About Martha De Laurentiis Martha De Laurentiis is a veteran of the film industry of over thirty years, working alongside her late husband, Dino De Laurentiis, and producing over 40 films including Hannibal, Red Dragon and U-571. Her current projects include the sci-fi original feature The 7th Day, the MacGyver reboot, and the Hannibal television series in partnership with Gaumont/NBC Universal starring Hugh Dancy and Mads Mikkelsen.

About JEAN-CLAUDE FOREST Jean-Claude Forest was born in 1930 in a Paris suburb and graduated from the Paris School of Design. He began working as an illustrator in the early 1950s, contributing covers to many French newspapers and magazines, including France-Soir. During that period, he also became the cover artist for a leading French science-fiction imprint. Forest became famous when he created Barbarella in 1962 for V-Magazine, soon translated in a dozen countries and adapted into a film starring Jane Fonda. Forest's career encompassed several other major works such as Hypocrite, Mysterious Planet, and Les Naufragés du Temps. In recognition of his talent, he was awarded the Grand Prize at the 1984 Angouleme Comics Festival and honored by the issuance of a French postage stamp in 1989. Forest passed away in Paris on December 29, 1998, at age 68. About Gaumont International Television Gaumont International Television is the newly launched production and distribution studio based in Los Angeles and part of Gaumont, the legendary European-based motion picture studio.

Gaumont, formed in 1895, is one of the main European production companies with a film library holding over 900 titles. As an independent studio, Gaumont International Television is producing high-quality drama and comedy television programming for the U.S. and international markets with a number of projects currently in the works, including Hannibal for NBC and Hemlock Grove for Netflix.

Question: Which 1968 film starring Jane Fonda was based on the French comics created by Jean-Claude Forest?
Answer: Barbarella